Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.

Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.

Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.

Thorns and Nature's Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.

Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.

Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed "Revitalize." It now also works with Wild Growth.

We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

a) Bears now get to use a "shield block" mechanic, of sorts.
b) Armor reduction abilites are now all going to a flat percentage rather than a fixed value. This naturally follows from the change to Armor Penetration and should make things easier for clothies in PvP.
c) Thanks for letting trees use Thorns; it was annoying having to constantly shift out to cast it.
d) Revitalize works with WG? That would make it almost not totally useless. Now add Regrowth and Lifebloom and it may have some value.

*New Spell* Savage Defense, 1 rank, level 40 - Each time you deal a melee critical strike, you gain Savage Defense, reducing the damage taken from the next physical attack that strikes you by 25% of your attack power.

Survival of the Fittest (Tier 6) now increases your armor contribution from cloth and leather items in Bear Form and Dire Bear Form by 11/22/33%. (Previously 22/44/66%)

Predatory Strikes (Tier 4) now includes Moonkin Form in its effect.

Restoration

Living Seed: This talent now accounts for your ineffective healing, rather than effective.

Improved Mark of the Wild: Now also increases all of your total attributes by 1/2%.

New Talent: Improved Barkskin: Increases the damage reduction granted by your Barkskin spell by 5/10%, and increases your resistance to Dispel mechanics by an additional 30/60% while under the effect of Barkskin.

Replenish: This talent is now re-named "Revitalize" and now also works with Wild Growth.

Tree of Life: You can now use Nature's Grasp and Thorns while within this form.

The Savage Defense thing is kind of interesting: it gives Feral Druids a type of blocking mechanic that is based on critical strike rating and attack power. This is apparently what Blizzard meant when they said they'd be allowing bears to benefit from a wider variety of stats. The new Primal Gore talent is made of win: bleeds being able to crit? Yeowch. And as if we weren't already clear enough about its intended use, Owlkin Frenzy is now even more explicitly designed for Panzerkins and their PvP equivalents.

I'm a bit disappointed by the lack of Balance changes in general, and specifically the failure to address the weakness of mana conservation/regen talents, but I have to admit that Boomkins are in a pretty good place right now and probably don't need major adjustments.

As for Restoration, I'm glad the Replenish/Revitalize change got made; it's now no longer quite as horrifically sucky as it was before. Oh, wait... yes it is. It's pretty nice to see Imp RG changed to benefit Nourish, as that'll assist with Living Seed synergy. But adding Improved Barkskin as a Tier 10 talent as a sop to PvP Resto Druids just seems kind of wierd.

I don't see the value in extensively gearing for crit in a Restoration spec. The only thing you have to watch out for haste-wise is clipping the GCD on your HoTs. With Gift of the Earthmother, you hit the GCD cap at approx. 17% haste. The value of crit is that it increases efficiency independent of mana consumption (not to mention those juicy Living Seed procs), while haste gives you throughput at the cost of extra mana. That may become an issue in Ulduar.

The function of the talent change seems to be to move players away from Regrowth spam and provide more of an incentive to use Nourish. Given the faster cast time of the latter, the benefit from having HoTs on the target, and the new glyph, it seems like a viable choice now. I'm not sure that crit scaling really factored into the equation all that much.

I agree with you; I was just thinking out loud. It doesn't affect me personally since I prefer Nourish to RG spam, and am focusing more on haste than crit in gearing up (although I do regret passing up some haste gloves to replace my h-nexus crit gloves)

I don't actually understand, Lealla, why you would put 5 points into Naturalist (Reduces HT cast time by .5s)...
Currently, I never cast HT unless it's combined with Nature's Swiftness. Furthermore, you aren't taking Nature's Grace to reduce the cast time given a RG or Nourish crit (though NG works with any spell crit), and you're not glyphing it.

There was a debate between the healing throughput of Glyphed RG vs. Glyphed HT, where Glyphed HT worked kinda like a flash heal (that priests have), and Glyphed RG won hands down. While this MIGHT not be relevant with Imp. RG reduction, I still wouldn't waste five talent points on a spell that's not going to be cast all that often without NS anyway. If you want a big-ish heal, Nourish is that spell now.

Personally, on my resto druid, I used those 5 points and put them into Improved Tranq (for the times that I use 'em... not often, but I like to have it on CD just in case), and Subtlety, because well, I'm an aggro whore.

Glyphed HT always seemed to me like a substitute for Nourish before players got to 80. It seems utterly redundant now, not to mention making NS a lot weaker. The best choices seem to me like Regrowth, Lifebloom, and Swiftmend (currently). With the new Wild Growth and Nourish glyphs, it's going to be a tough decision.

You're right that Naturalist is a weak talent; I put it in there mainly because Subtlety is almost irrelevant to current raid content. It's one of the optional ones; if you feel that Imp Tranq and Subtlety are better places to go, have at it. Honestly, I've never seen Tranquility used in a raid setting in anything other than a last-ditch survival effort when things are already boned.

Nature's Grace, for 3 points, has far too little benefit for its cost, whether you go with an HT spec or not.

my possible 3.1 resto build. I tend to play a varied role, so I specc'd both revitalize as well as seed.

What varied role could possibly need the use of Revitalize? Please, please, please don't fall into that group of players that think it's actually a worthwhile talent. It isn't. You're better off taking those points and putting them in Natural Perfection. I know you know better than that Pale. <3

Actually, Mel, on the PTR right now, the reports are now that Revitalize is affected by Wild Growth, it's a bit OP (since each second tick has a chance to proc the effect). It's SO OP on the PTR that some druids want Revitalize to be nerfed for the WG portion to 5% (instead of the 15% it is now).

Lealla, I chose Imp Tranquility for five mans only since on my Horde druid, I PUG a lot, and well... stupid people can't get out of the fire? Looking at the changes in 3.1 now, though, I couldn't fit it into my talents so I'll have to live without. Also, Nature's Grace is an OK talent for those who like to spam RG. There's an interesting post on EJ about a druid who uses Glyphed HT to spam out 17K worth of heals in 3.2s. Not to shabby, but I don't know of a raid situation that I've been in when a tank has gotten that low.

If they don't nerf Revitalize, I'll definiitely be picking it up since (as Druids tend to QQ) we'll probably be forced to spam it whenever it's off CD just for the mana regen effect.

Speaking of Glyphs though, once my Alliance druid is up to snuff, I'll definitely be going with WG, Nourish and probably RG, although I'll have to wait for the numbers on the RG glyph post 3.1 to see if it's worth it or not.

But speaking of numbers, they aren't out yet for Liviing Seed, so we'll even have to see if that's worth picking up anymore.

I guess it's just hard for me to justify spending 3 points in something that I can't control. The proc may be high on the PTR with WG, but is it going to people that really need it? Is it really a benefit? Is any resto druid really going to attempt to watch mana/rage/energy/runic power bars and gauge where they throw their wg/rejuv off of that? I'm a healer first and foremost, not a mana/rage/energy/runic power battery. My responsibility as I see it is to keep people alive and I just don't see it as effective to spend points there when I can place them elsewhere to benefit my healing output. <3

First of all, to play Devil's Advocate, Living Seed isn't something we can control (at least not to the extent that we can now), and yet we still take it. It's helpful for the situations in which it is useful.

Now, Revitalize will also be something that will be situationally useful. With the nerf to mana regen outside 5sr, maybe this little bit helps... maybe it doesn't. All I'm saying is that it's not as bad as it used to be.

For the most part, the situation you're addressing (super OCD druids managing runic power/energy/mana or what have you) is super unrealistic for the fact that no normal person does that. There was a blog post on Resto4Life that discussed Replenish back when it was released, which showed that hypothetically it was a weak talent to take because anyone finding it useful would not show a significant amount of dps increase, or any similiar amount of increase in tankage (when talking about prot wars/bears).

So yes, while it is definitely our responsibility to keep people alive, it's not an extra burden for us to give them the Revitalize buff.

If you're having trouble finding those three points, if I were you, I'd spec out of Tranquil Spirit (reduced mana cost HT, Nourish, Tranquility) and put those five points else where. Tranquil Spirit was useful for Glyphed HT spammers to increase the mana efficiency of HT, and with the Nourish glyph in 3.1, you can cast a more costly Nourish, but with full hots, you'll heal for more anyway. (And, I just hate that talent ><)